United States or Hungary ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
When we arrived the snake-killing was over, and the boys were all refreshing themselves with large cheroots purloined from the dining-room on their behalf by a friendly kitmutgar. The dragging of the tank was really a wonderful sight. As the net reached the far end it was one solid mass of great shining, blue-grey fish, of about thirty pounds weight each.
Among the verandah roof-beams, three grey squirrels argued, with subdued chitterings, over a kipper's head stolen from a breakfast plate; and at intervals a piteous wailing came from the servants' quarters, where, as all knew, Nizam Din, kitmutgar, was beating his pretty wife, Miriam Bibi, for the third time that week, because she had grown careless in the matter of covering her face, since the coming of Zyarulla, whose arrogant magnificence had created a flutter in more than one respectable household.
It is the witching hour of 10 a.m. and I am sitting in my little ante-room boudoir, call it what you will immersed in correspondence, Boggley, hard-worked man that he is, has departed for his office followed by a kitmutgar carrying some sandwiches and a bottle of soda-water, which is his modest lunch. Really a Government servant's life is no easy one.
We are very busy collecting things to take home with us. We could hardly be dragged from the absorbing sight to the luncheon-table. The Townleys never change their servants, and now three generations serve together. The old kitmutgar is the grandfather and trains his grandsons in the way which they should go.
At sunset we take a constitutional, followed by our portable residences, into which, after a romantic tea-drinking by the roadside, we turn in for the night, awaking at daylight to find ourselves thirty miles nearer to our journey's end, in a bungalow precisely similar to the one we had lately quitted, and containing the same rickety table, greasy with the unwiped remains of the last traveller's meal, which the book will inform you was eaten a month ago the same treacherous chairs, which look sound until you inadvertently sit upon them the same doubtful-looking couch, from which the same interesting round little specimens emerge, much to the discomfort of the occupant the same filthy bathroom, which it is evident the traveller a month ago did not use the identical old kitmutgar or bungalow-keeper, who looks as uncivilized as the bungalow itself, and seems to partake of its rickety and dirty nature the same clump of trees before, and the same desert plain behind; all tend to induce the belief either that you have never left the bungalow in which you spent the previous day, or that some evil genius has transported the said bungalow thirty miles for the express purpose of persecuting you with its horrors and miserable accommodation.
And yet there they are Boggley's bearer and my ayah I can see some reason for their presence a kitmutgar to wait on us at table and bring tea in the afternoon, another young assistant kitmutgar who scurries like a frightened rabbit at my approach, a delightful small boy who rejoices in the name of pani-wallah, whose sole duty is to carry water for the baths, the dhobi who washes our clothes by beating them between two large and I should say, judging by the state of the clothes, sharp stones, losing most of them in the process, and a syce or groom for each pony.
Colonel Mayhew, meanwhile, rummaging feverishly in the depths of the kilter with scant hope of success, bestrewed the wet earth on all sides of him with canned fruits, sardines, greasy jharrons, and crumpled wads of newspaper: till at length, like Hope out of Pandora's casket, there came forth from an unsuspicious-looking bundle of clothes half a bottle of brandy, stowed carefully away by the kitmutgar, for private ends best known to himself.
And as there's no time like now, I'll ask her to-day . . I have scarcely seen her this last fortnight. But that shall be atoned for . . later. Give me your blessing, ma belle!" Half-seriously, half in joke, he knelt beside her chair. But the entrance of the kitmutgar with a note brought him swiftly to his feet. "Talk of an angel! It is herself," he exclaimed as he broke the seal.
A kitmutgar is a man who waits at table, and a chaprassey is another servant, whose duty it is to run on messages, to attend on ladies when they go out, and to perform the general duties of a footman, though he does not wait at table. You must know, Fanny, in India each person has especial duties, and he considers it degrading to perform any others.
We were told, indeed, that two children, after being buried for five days, were dug out alive; two officers were blown out of the window of an hotel, one of whom was uninjured, the other was only wounded by a splinter, whilst the Kitmutgar, who was drawing a cork close to them at the time, was killed on the spot.
Word Of The Day